{"id":6410,"date":"2012-01-09T10:45:20","date_gmt":"2011-12-15T07:50:33","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-15T07:50:33","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=6410","title":{"rendered":"CA10: Officer not limited to traditional weapons in a patdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

Defendant had no paperwork on him after a stop of his car, and he assented to a patdown. The officer felt two long hard objects in the pockets but couldn\u2019t determine what they were. After defendant refused to explain, the officer removed them finding glass pipes with drug residue. Removal of the pipes was valid. United States v. Rochin<\/a>, 662 F.3d 1272 (10th Cir. 2011):<\/p>\n

And we don\u2019t hesitate to hold that test satisfied here. A reasonable officer could have concluded that the long and hard objects detected in Mr. Rochin\u2019s pockets might be used as instruments of assault, particularly given that an effort to ask Mr. Rochin about the identity of the objects had proved fruitless. To be sure, the pipes Mr. Rochin turned out to have aren\u2019t conventionally considered weapons. But a reasonable officer isn\u2019t credited with x-ray vision and can\u2019t be faulted for having failed to divine the true identity of the objects. And neither is \u201cthe scope of a Terry frisk … limited to [traditional] weapons.\u201d Holmes, 385 F.3d at 791. During a lawful pat down an officer may remove not just objects that seem to be guns, knives and the like, but also any other objects that he reasonably thinks \u201cmight be used as instruments of assault\u201d against him or others who may be in the area. Sibron, 392 U.S. at 65. And two hard and long objects filling a suspect\u2019s trouser pockets \u201cfit that description well,\u201d better than the \u201chard, square object\u201d at issue in Holmes, 385 F.3d at 791, and better than many other objects courts have held officers may lawfully remove during Terry stops, see, e.g., United States v. Rahman, 189 F.3d 88, 120 (2d Cir. 1999) (envelope); United States ex rel. McNeil v. Rundle, 325 F. Supp. 672, 677 (E.D. Pa. 1971) (watch). None of this is to say we necessarily endorse (or reject) the conclusions reached about the objects at issue in these other cases. It is instead only to emphasize by comparison how much more (objectively reasonable) reason there was for an officer to worry about the objects in the case at hand.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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